Page 42 of Warrant
He glanced up, feeling the weight of our stares, and shrugged. “Rat already sent everything over and asked if I could take a look. He had the same thought as me, that he might’ve missed something.”
“Did he send you the video?” Cypher asked.
“Yeah.”
“Put it on the screen,” he ordered, turning on the big screen TV that hung up on the wall.
We all watched in grim silence as four men approached the vehicle in broad daylight, broke out the windows, and took off with Riggs’s SUV with the kids still in the backseat.
“Fuckers,” Scythe growled. “Were they just going for the vehicle?”
“That’s what Cade thought at first,” Cypher said. “But then why not dump the kids somewhere with a bunch of people and take off?”
“Better yet,” I added, “make them get out of the car right then and there. Rewind it, Glitch.” I stood up and went to the screen. “Right there. Play.” I tapped at the boy in the back seat. “He’s yelling, trying to protect his sister. See the way he’s shielding her with his body?”
“She probably woke up screaming and crying to the windows being smashed in,” Torque said, sadness coating his words. He was the youngest of our crew at twenty-four and had a huge, soft heart. “Poor kid.”
“Fucking bastards,” Cynic snarled. “You don’t mess with kids.”
“They cameforthe kids,” I continued. “Otherwise they would have dragged them out and left them in the parking lot. No one purposefully takes a vehicle with children in it. Too much of a liability. Look, rewind it again. See that guy, the lead guy? He’s looking in the back seat. He’s confirming that the kids are in there. He wanted them. So, who would want to take those children?”
Cypher gave me an appreciative look. “You figured out in a couple minutes what it took them hours to realize. They did go after the kids. Not the vehicle. SUV was just the easiest way to transport them.”
“Why those two?” Scythe asked.
“One,” Cypher said.
“What?” Demo asked.
“They only wanted one of the kids,” I said, catching onto what Cypher was getting at. I stared up at the screen. “Has to be the boy.”
“Why?” Pyre asked. “Why the boy?”
“What would taking a three-year-old get them?” I asked with a shrug.
“What would taking a fifteen-year-old get them?” Pyre countered.
“He involved with any unsavory types?” I asked. “Friends from school?”
“You’re on the right track with basically jack shit for information,” Cypher said, sounding impressed. “I forgot how fucking good you were at your job with the MPs. Sit down.”
Cypher stood up and began pacing as he laid out everything Cade and Lock had told him. “Jared is adopted. Riggs found him living on the streets when the kid was around twelve years old. They took him in. Adopted him. End of story.”
“Not anymore,” I said, staring up at the now frozen screen. The kid looked pissed, even if the video was grainy black and white. “He knows them. Or they told him something. He’s mad,” I pointed out when Scythe raised his brows. “Not scared. Pissed.”
“Rat tracked down his relatives. A mother. And a grandfather,” Cypher said. “Turns out the grandfather died about a month ago. Jared had lived with him when he was younger. Until the mother turned up one night, took her kid, and hot footed it to Texas with some boyfriend. Or so the CPS reports say. Mother abandoned him at a gas station, a couple days after getting to Austin.”
“Piece of shit,” Torque said in a low voice.
Jury nodded in agreement, his arms crossed over his chest as he quietly listened.
“Grandfather tried to get custody of Jared, but crossing state lines made it harder. They put the kid in foster care while they tried to work through the red tape. Jared took off. Lived on the streets until Riggs found him. It’d been a couple of years by that point and the grandfather had given up on ever finding him. Not sure why he wasn’t notified when Jared was found, but that’s the story.”
“So the grandfather paid these guys to get him back,” Demo suggested.
“He died,” Glitch reminded everyone. “Month ago. Heart attack.” He tapped at his keyboard. “Oh shit.”
“What?” we asked as a group.
